Tim Tebow: Denver's New Favorite Mensch

How Denver's Religious Communities Have Rallied Around the Broncos Quarterback

In Denver, where the Broncos are the closest thing to a universal religion, the faith for football is so fervent that it sometimes supersedes other beliefs-especially since the arrival of Tim Tebow. Ben Cohen has details on Lunch Break.

By

Ben Cohen

Updated Dec. 12, 2011 1:28 p.m. ET

In Denver, where the Broncos are the closest thing to a universal religion, the faith for football is so fervent that it sometimes supersedes other beliefs—especially since the arrival of Tim Tebow. In catapulting Denver to first place in the AFC West, Tebow has defied his skeptics in ways that might make even the most secular of pigskin purists consider the possibility of divine intervention.

And with the Broncos prospering under Tebow, different religious communities in Denver's metropolitan area have embraced the starting quarterback, even if their beliefs don't line up with his. The devout evangelical Christian, who isn't shy about praying on the football field, has catalyzed such a pervasive conversation about the role of faith in public that some religious figures in Colorado's Front Range even consider Tebow fodder for the pulpit.

Around 10 p.m. on a recent evening, the rabbi at Denver's Temple Emanuel was asked if he would ever sermonize about Tebow. Joe Black responded as if he had just chugged an espresso.

"Oh, absolutely!" he said. "Here's the sermon I would deliver and probably will deliver: Tim Tebow is broadcasting the fact that he believes in God. God is actively involved in his life. We call ourselves people of faith. Is that how we perceive God? And if not, how do we perceive God?"

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Another Denver rabbi, Temple Sinai's Rick Rheins, said he might feel "compelled" to preach about Tebow if the Broncos sneak into the playoffs. Then he reminded himself of this week's Torah portion. It's about Jacob wrestling with uncertainties of his own. "He's not the most accurate thrower in the world, and he obviously has questionable NFL quarterback skills, and yet he doesn't doubt himself," said Rheins, who roots for the Bengals, Colts and of course the Broncos.

Tebow's appeal stretches beyond Denver's Jewish population. Khaled Hamideh visited the United States from Jordan in 1977 and fell for America's Team: the Cowboys. He moved permanently in 1985 and still pulls for Dallas and, now, the Broncos. At the Colorado Muslim Society, the mosque where Hamideh is the board's chairman, the Broncos don't come up usually in conversation. But Tebow is often a topic for discussion when Hamideh and his friends gather for weekly barbecues and potluck dinners. He counts himself as a Tebow fan mostly because of the quarterback's winning pedigree.

"I know I'm a Muslim and he's a Christian, but I admire somebody who thanks God for everything that he gave him," Hamideh said. "The team has rallied around him not because of his religious beliefs but because they believe this guy has something in him that pushes him the right way."

Even in the supermarket, Ruth Borri, a teacher at the Avalokiteshvara Buddhist Center in Denver, overhears aisle talk about Tebow. She finds his steadfast devotion refreshing. "There's a great deal of spirituality missing in our whole culture in general," she said. "His willingness to be what he is and not be ashamed of it is something that I think is an admirable quality."

A prominent area atheist also declared Tebow's displays fine by him. Boulder Atheists co-founder Marvin Straus doesn't follow sports closely. Still, he estimated that he has seen Tebow kneel "4,823 times" without objecting.

"From my perspective, it's about as useful as an amulet during the Black Plague. But if I have the right to stand up in public and say there's no gods or devils or heaven or hell, he has the right to kneel in public, as long as he doesn't insist that other people join him," Straus said. "Somebody that's on a private team wants to express his religious belief? To me, that's called freedom of religion."

Kleinstein recently sold Tebowing T-shirts for charity with his alma mater: Denver Jewish Day School. "Tebowing and the Tebow phenomenon has sort of transcended religion," Kleinstein said.

In college at Florida, Tebow wrote Bible verses on his strips of eye black. NFL rules prohibit eye-black messages, so Tebow now cites the Bible on Twitter to almost 600,000 followers on the mornings of Broncos games. He adds "GB2"—an abbreviation for "God Bless and Go Broncos"—at the end of the tweets. But this digital shift doesn't mean Denver isn't any less fanatic about football.

ENLARGE

Tim Tebow prays with the Broncos and Chargers after Denver's overtime win in San Diego on Nov. 27.
Getty Images

One Monday evening in September, Asher Klein scheduled a class for his congregation at the orthodox synagogue DAT Minyan. The rabbi had moved from West Orange, N.J. to Colorado only two months earlier. What he didn't realize was that this Monday evening in September happened to be the night of the Broncos' season opener.

"I had very stellar turnouts up until that point. That night, it was empty," Klein said. "That's when I realized I'm not in New York anymore."

The problem for Colorado's rabbis? The game falls on a Saturday morning. Black tries to avoid scheduling programs on Sundays during the NFL season, he said, but this game coincides with Shabbat, the day of rest in Judaism. He usually wraps up services around 12:15 p.m. MT—an hour after kickoff in Buffalo. "I think there will be a lot of people praying from home," he said.

Even though that Week 16 Saturday is the rare one without a bar mitzvah at Temple Sinai, Rheins doesn't plan to speed through services for the sake of his congregation's Broncos faithful.

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